Love and war

1401 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The killer ernest hemingway analytical essay

Ernest Hemingway was a man who was intrigued by the complexity that love and war brought to intimate relationships. Not only was Hemingway intrigued by love and war, he once also lived it. During WWI Hemingway served as a Red Cross ambulance driver; after being seriously wounded he spent six months at the Red Cross hospital in Milan where he fell in love for the first time. Falling in love with the nurse also resulted in Hemingway’s first heartbreak. Hemingway was a “damned good looking man”, which allowed him to have plenty of relationships with women. Having been married four times to four different women also gives light as to why the relationships he writes about always fail in his stories. Although Hemingway never served as a soldier in war, as much as he wanted to, he knew that the burdens of war always resulted in a failed love. Ultimately, Hemingway uses the war to attack the romantic delusions individuals had prior to WWI to signify the affects war cast on romance.
Nick Adams is a fictional character that Hemingway has made a sequence of short stories about. In the short story Now I Lay Me, Hemingway introduces us to Nick who is a soldier in WWI. We quickly learn that Nick is an insomniac and he is afraid of going to sleep at night because if he ever shut his eyes in the dark and let his self go “[His] soul would go out of [His] body”(276). The reason that Nick is afraid of going to sleep at night during the war is because he had been blown up at night and once felt his soul go out of him and then come back. Every night Nick attempts to disregard his fear of the war by staying awake and reminiscing about the trout stream he has once fished along as a boy, or sometimes he’d simply stay awake and say his prayers and pray...

... middle of paper ...

... and war, we saw how they correlated to one another yet also differed from one another in their own unique ways. Nick Adams, a WWI soldier, was left mentally and emotionally incapable of coming to terms with love and marriage due to his traumatic experience. Jake and Brett, like Nick, were both affected by the war in their own distinctive ways, but both were incapable of allowing the relationship between each other to become successful. As for Henry and Catherine, who seemed to have fallen in love at the perfect time, also had a love that was affected by the war, and in the end one is left alone. All the characters are victims of the lost generation of WWI. Hemingway makes it apparent that in each story, love has the ability to change people profoundly but the war sets limitations on those who are hopefuls of their outdated prewar value system of honor and romance.

Show More
Related

  • “What We Lost in the Great War”

    1134 Words  | 3 Pages

    Although Jake was spared his life in the great war, he lost another part of his life and future. Jack tries to compensate his lack of any real future with Brett or any other women with his passion for bullfighing and other frivalties. In John Steele Gordon’s article, “What We Lost in the Great War” Gordon laments the loss of hope and future the generation of the war felt. The characters of the novel, and especially Jake, exemplify the lack of direction felt after the war. Their aimless drinking, parties and participation in the fiesta is an example of the absence of focus in their life.

    Read More

  • Symbolism In Soldiers Home By Hemingway

    622 Words  | 2 Pages

    Hemingway deals with the effects of war on the male desire for women in many of his novels and short stories, notably in his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In this novel, the main character Jake, is impotent because of an injury received in World War I. Jakes situation is reminiscent of our main character Krebs. Both characters have been damaged by World War I; the only difference is Jake’s issue is physical, while Krebs issue is mental. Krebs inwardly cannot handle female companionship. Although Krebs still enjoys watching girls from his porch and he “vaguely wanted a girl but did not want to have to work to get her” (167). Krebs found courting “not worth it” (168). The girls symbolize what World War I stripped from our main character, a desire that is natural for men, the desire for women.

    Read More

  • What Is Hemingway's Use Of Mental Control In Big Two-Hearted River

    1198 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his short story, “Big Two-Hearted River”, Ernest Hemingway focuses on the mental and emotional state of Nick, the protagonist, who “le[aves] everything behind” during a wilderness fishing trip. Traumatic thoughts and memories haunt Nick, but the cause of his inner turmoil is not disclosed in the story. Other short stories by Hemingway, however, reveal that Nick Adams is a wounded veteran who served in the First World War. To distract himself from these painful memories, Nick concentrates on the physical details of his journey such as making camp and preparing food. In addition to self-distraction, he attempts to inhibit his ability to think through hunger and physical exhaustion.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Figurative Language In Big Two Hearted River By Ernest Hemingway

    1230 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot”, he says “Mrs. Elliot and the girl friend now slept together in the big mediaeval bed” (Hemingway 88). Without explicitly admitting it, Hemingway implies that Mrs. Elliot and her “friend” are lovers. Based on the vignette preceding this story, this is due to Mr. Elliot’s lack of masculinity. The vignette tells the story of a man who fails in his attempt to kill a bull in a bullfight, showing that he, too, lacks masculinity. This directly relates to “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot” because they both show men who are not manly enough to perform their respective duties. Another example of this is in “Soldier’s Home”, during which a soldier’s transition from war to home is described. He says “Before Krebs went away to the war he had never been allowed to drive the family motor car… Now, after the war, it was still the same car” (Hemingway 70) and “He had learned that in the army” (Hemingway 72). After this story comes a vignette in which two men are seen showing their prejudice towards certain races. “They 're crooks, ain 't they… They 're wops, ain 't they… I can tell wops a mile off” (Hemingway 79). These prejudices most likely derive from the war. The placement of this vignette directly following the “Soldier’s Home” emphasizes how the war can follow people home and alter the ways in which they view the world around them. Hemingway’s placement of stories and chapters

    Read More

  • Love and War

    2165 Words  | 5 Pages

    I would like to explore the concept of love, the dichotomy of the masculine/feminine perspective and how it relates to the two short stories. Also I will explore the ideas of “phantoms” or in other words the imaginary idealization and objectification of the characters.

    Read More

  • Masculinity In The Great Gatsby By Ernest Hemingway

    1111 Words  | 3 Pages

    In her article, "We Could Have Had Such a Damned Good Time Together": Individual and Society in "The Sun Also Rises" and "Mutmassungen über Jakob," Sara Lennox believes that Hemingway attempts to represent a thoughtful cultural pessimism in relation to the possibility for human happiness in the society his characters find themselves immersed in. Lennox states that Hemingway demonstrates “that for Western civilization in the twentieth century, even love is no longer a successful solution to human estrangement” (83). It is through Jake’s disengagement from his male counterparts and acceptance of their power that he comes to understand himself. Lennox, however, disagrees that Hemingway’s novel explores the maturation of Jake over the course of the novel and asserts that “by linking the impossibility of Jake's and Brett's love to a specific historical event Hemingway indicates that his novel is the exploration of a particular historical development rather than an existential statement on the nature of human being” (84). Although Hemingway explores the “Lost Generation” in a post-war world, the progression of Jake’s internal thoughts reveal his self-perception as a human being in a

    Read More

  • The Effects of War On Soldiers

    995 Words  | 2 Pages

    Hemingway’s characters exemplify the effects of combat because World War I had a negative impact on them; the veterans lead meaningless lives filled with masculine uncertainty. Jake and his friends (all veterans) wander aimlessly throughout the entire novel. Their only goal seems to be finding an exciting restaurant or club where they will spend their time. Every night consists of drinking and dancing, which serves as a distraction from their very empty lives. The alcohol helps the characters escape from their memories from the war, but in the end, it just causes more commotion and even evokes anger in the characters. Their years at war not only made their lives unfulfilling but also caused the men to have anxiety about their masculinity, especially the narrator Jake, who “gave more than his life” in the war (Hemingway). Jake feels that the war took away his manhood because he is unable to sleep with Brett as a result of an injury. Although he wants to have a relationship with Brett, and spends most of his time trying to pursue her, she rejects him because he cannot have a physical relationship with her. At several points in the novel, Brett and Jake imagine what their lives could have been like together, had he not been injured during the war. Thus, his physical injury gives him emotional distress because he cannot have a relationship with the woman he always wanted. The traditional American perception of...

    Read More

  • Progression of Love in Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms

    1314 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Progression of Love in A Farewell to Arms There are two major themes in A Farewell to Arms that Hemingway clearly conveys: war and love. The war theme is obvious because the book is set during the World War. The theme of love is less obvious, it begins faintly because of the uncertainty between Frederick Henry and Catherine Barkley. Neither desire love or commitment to anyone, but act upon their desires of passion. As the story progresses, so does their love.

    Read More

  • Our Time Themes

    618 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ernest Hemingway uses the various events in Nick Adams life to expose the reader to the themes of youth, loss, and death throughout his novel In Our Time. Youth very often plays its part in war, and since In Our Time relates itself very frequently to war throughout; it is not a surprise that the theme of youthful innocence arises in many of the stories. In “Indian Camp” the youthful innocence is shown in the last sentence of the story: “In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.” (19) When this sentence and the conversation Nick and his father have before they get on the boat are combined in thought it shows that because of Nicks age at the time that he does not yet understand the concept of death.

    Read More

  • A Whole Novel Or Many Short Stories, The Answer Is Ernest Hemingway

    1928 Words  | 4 Pages

    There are many parallels to Hemingway’s life and his main character’s development. First in “Indian Camp” chapter one, we are introduced to Nick Adams and his father. They are on a boat going to an Indian camp to operate on a woman who cannot deliver her baby. The simple connection to Hemingway’s life is that his father was...

    Read More

  • Jake Barnes Relationship

    1449 Words  | 3 Pages

    At the beginning of the novel, Jake is obsessed with Brett and thinks that they will end up together even though she is very unstable in relationships. By the end of the novel, Jake has accepted that he and Brett will never be together, reaching a sort of peacefulness because of his more realistic ideas about their relationship. Although pain still lingers because he cannot have his true love, Jake has matured enough that he can begin to appreciate other aspects of life and not be so focused on Brett. In the novel, Hemingway depicts the emotional weight that relationships bring onto people and how they can relieve themselves or free themselves from that

    Read More

  • In Another Country of Hemingway

    604 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...is story, Hemingway brings the readers back the war and see what it caused to human as well as shows that how the war can change a man's life forever. We think that just people who have been exposed to the war can deeply understand the unfortunates, tolls, and devastates of the war. He also shared and deeply sympathized sorrows of who took part in the war; the soldiers because they were not only put aside the combat, the war also keeps them away from community; people hated them as known they are officers and often shouted " down with officers" as they passing. We have found any blue and mournful tone in this story but we feel something bitter, a bitter sarcasm. As the war passing, the soldiers would not themselves any more, they became another ones; hunting hawks, emotionless. They lost everything that a normal man can have in the life. the war rob all they have.

    Read More

  • Love And Love

    823 Words  | 2 Pages

    Perpetually, one of the main supreme lies from hell occurs regarding the term ‘making love;’ which in truth, the majority of people happen to persist in performing a ‘sex act’ and in reality has nothing whatsoever to do with love! For without a doubt, this assuming position exists as a disgrace to use lustful sex with God’s name of LOVE, appearing to exist in the same league. Unknowingly, countless people live and die under the false illusion of love, such as the story concerning my best friend Marcy; which died from cervical cancer. Emphatically, the ordeal devastated me and remains one of the greatest heartbreaks of my life. The doctor said the type of malignancy she had acquired persisted as basically AIDS; which occurred from having a

    Read More

  • Essay On Ernest Hemingway

    1355 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... much to be learned about the deeply troubled and equally enthusiastic Ernest Hemingway. From thrill-seeking to several failed marriages nearly every aspect of his life shines through into his style, attitude, and life choices most clearly of all his writing both professional and informal. The straightforwardness and simplicity of his prose ushered in a new style drastically different from the flowery, embellished descriptions and drawn out stories from the previous century. Ultimately Ernest Miller Hemingway will forever be a timeless, classic American writer who succeeded despite his alcoholism, faltering health, intimacy issues, and presumed psychological disease which is most likely the perpetrator creating both his risky escapades and adulterous rendezvous in addition to his debilitating bouts of depression, bitterness, and eventually suicidal behaviors.

    Read More

  • Themes of Love and War in A Farewell to Arms

    2035 Words  | 5 Pages

    Theme is a literary element used in literature and has inspired many poets, playwrights, and authors. The themes of love and war are featured in literature, and inspire authors to write wartime romances that highlight these two themes. Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms deals with the collective themes in the human experience such as love and the reality of war. A Farewell to Arms is narrated from the perspective of Fredric Henry, an ambulance driver in the Italian army, and pertains to his experiences in the war. The novel also highlights the passionate relationship between Henry and Catherine Barkley, a British nurse in Italy. Henry’s insight into the war and his intense love for Catherine emphasize that love and war are the predominant themes in the novel and these themes contribute to bringing out the implicit and explicit meaning of the novel. Being a part of the Italian army, Henry is closely involved with the war and has developed an aversion to the war. Henry’s association with the war has also made him realise that war is inglorious and the sacrifices made in war are meaningless. Specifically, Henry wants the war to end because he is disillusioned by the war and knows that war is not as glorious as it is made up to be. The state of affairs and the grim reality of the war lead Henry towards an ardent desire for a peaceful life, and as a result Henry repudiates his fellow soldiers at the warfront. Henry’s desertion of the war is also related to his passionate love for Catherine. Henry’s love for Catherine is progressive and ironic. This love develops gradually in “stages”: Henry’s attempt at pretending love for Catherine towards the beginning of the novel, his gradually developing love for her, and finally, Henry’s impas...

    Read More

More about Love and war

Open Document